The ICONS atlas

Content

Introduction

This atlas is a compilation of global crustal and lithospheric structure data for
242 intercontinental sedimentary basins. It is part of my PhD project investigating
the formation and evolution of intracontinental basins and combines
information about crustal structure, plate kinematics and mantle dynamics in
one coherent HTML-based presentation. The aim is to provide quantitative constraints
for next generation basin modeling approaches which integrate deep-earth dynamics,
plate tectonics and lithospheric modeling.

The full version of the atlas uses a PostGIS geospatial database backend and
a series of Python and XML based workflows to compute grids and tie plate
tectonic data together with mantle convection models. All software tools
used are open-source and utilise non-proprietary file formats.

The pages are optimised for standard-compliant browsers, such as
Firefox,
Netscape,
Safari,
Camino.
The image quality in Internet Explorer especially on MS Windows is bad due to
the rendering of resized PNG files. Firefox and Camino on Mac OS X (Intel Chip Macs)
have problems displaying inline PDF documents in the browser. Camino will try to
download a PDF to disk. A fix for this behaviour is to run both, Firefox or Camino,
under Rosetta and use a PDF browser plug-in (Go to applications, select the browser
application and click on 'Info' (or Apple+i) and check 'open using Rosetta').

Navigation

The structure of the atlas is fairly simple: the globe is divided into several regions
in which the basins are grouped (e.g. Australia). A regional overview page collects
all information for the basins within that region. From there, a dropdown menu or
a link in the basin overview table allows the user to access the individual
basin pages with grids of higher resolution (2 min). Clicking the images will
open a print-quality PDF of the same image (regional- and basin-scale maps).

The regional page and the methodology pages can be accessed directly through
the dropdown menu. To display individual basin page, it is necessary to
navigate to the regional overview and start from there. Alternatively, one can
access the global basin overview.

Data: Sources and acknowledgements

This atlas makes use of the global crustal model CRUST2 and thermal lithosphere model TC1
(Artemieva, 2006) to construct
differential extension and anomalous tectonic subsidence grids for a set of more than 240 basin polygons.
Irena Artemieva is kindly acknowledged for providing us with her thermal lithosphere model

The dynamic topography computations are based on Bernhard Steinberger's models, the basin polygons
were kindly supplied by Trond Torsvik. Both are at the
Center of Geodynamics at the Norwegian Geological Survey (Trondheim). I am grateful to both of
them for kindly providing access to their data.